[advances in librarianship] librarianship in times of crisis volume 34 || “free puppies”:...

‘‘Free Puppies’’: Integrating WebResources into Online Catalogs

Robert L. Bothmann and Kellian ClinkLibrary Services, Minnesota State University, Mankato, Mankato, MN, USA

Abstract

This chapter describes means for selecting websites and the resources needed to add them toonline catalogs. Reasons are given for including websites in online catalogs such as timelinessand geographic specificity. A historical overview of Choice Reviews, wikis, and web-basedsources of websites is given along with an overview of Minnesota state resources from thepoint of view of using them as collection development tools for finding web resources. Socialwork librarians in the state were surveyed about their websites selection processes and theauthors conducted time/cost studies of cataloging of online web resources. Findings were thatlibrarians had little time to seek out websites and relied on Choice reviews to keep abreast ofnew and changing sites. Sources from the library literature and logs of staff time forcataloging of websites were used to approximate the costs of providing access. Although thecost/time study applied only to one library, the methodology and findings can be applied inalmost any discipline and different types and sizes of libraries. While budgetary hardships willmake librarians think hard about adding free resources to their catalogs, this chapter helps toquantify the necessary resources, implications, and reasons for inclusion of free web resourcesin online catalogs.

Keywords: Free web resources; web resources; collection development; cataloging costs;online catalogs

I. Introduction

LIBRARADVANr 201ISSN:DOI: 1

We look differently at the cardboard box full of free puppies outside the super marketonce we become adults. As children what could be more fun than to get a puppy who isgoing to be your friend for life? Why not mom . . . it’s FREE!! But as adults we havelearned the truth. We know that taking home that puppy is going to cost us in the end.The free price tag hides all the costs we are going to spend on food, training, shots, and anew couch once the puppy discovers you are not coming home at 5:00 every night towalk him. Open source WCM solutions are very similar. The free price tag is attractiveat first, but for online strategies that have multiple initiatives (intranet, extranet, portal,landing pages, micro-sites, etc.), the hidden fees lie in the heavy customization,maintenance and engineering work. (Buytaert, n.d.)

IANSHIP IN TIMES OF CRISISCES IN LIBRARIANSHIP, VOL. 341 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited0065-28300.1108/S0065-2830(2011)0000034011

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Robert L. Bothmann and Kellian Clink160

This is not a chapter about puppies nor is it about open source webcontent management (WCM) products. However, the concept of ‘‘freepuppies’’ is one that can be applied to collection development and resourcemaintenance, particularly in terms of gift materials or freely availableInternet and web resources. In fact, the last two sentences in the above quotecould be rewritten as follows:

Freely available Internet resources are very similar. The free price tag is attractive at first,but for collection developers and catalogers with limited budgets, time, and otherresources, the hidden fees lie in the research, evaluation, description, access, andmaintenance work.

Libraries of all kinds across the country are no stranger to budget cutsand limited funding since the 2008 economic downturn. Nicholas,Rowlands, Jubb, and Jamali (2010) spoke of alarm bells when they wrote‘‘academia is the worst hit sector, with 43.8% libraries saying they are downfrom the previous year’’ (p. 377). The early twenty-first century context forlibraries includes not only limited budgets but a strong, permanent upwardtrend toward using electronic information resources. Therefore one of themajor challenges for librarians is how to acquire needed resources and to doso with limited budget support.

This chapter discusses, from the lens of one academic department (socialwork), collection development and technical services processes and thehidden costs of adding content from websites into online catalogs. The valueof websites as sources of information is discussed along with a rationale foradding them to online catalogs. A short history of collection developmenttools for websites is also provided as well as a history of Minnesota’sLegislative Reference Library (LRL) and its role in making relevantdocuments and websites from state, federal, and nongovernmental sourcesaccessible. Findings from a brief survey of Minnesota social work librariansabout their use of web resources are presented. Finally, the results of a studyconducted in June 2010 Library Services at Minnesota State University,Mankato are reported to indicate how much staff time it takes to add andmaintain a selection of ‘‘free puppies.’’

II. The Value of Websites as Resources

Websites fill a special role in the delivery of timely research reports and datathat many other resources cannot. Books journey a long time from idea tobookshelf. Journal articles may also have a long lag time between idea andpublication. Newspapers are written for general audiences and do not contain

‘‘Free Puppies’’: Integrating Web Resources into Online Catalogs 161

scholarly analyses or citations. In contrast, websites often provide data andreports quickly that may not be accessible through traditional libraryinterfaces. Many nongovernmental organization (NGO) websites havestatistics, research, and reports on current events which are not indexed indatabases and are generally not accessible from the shallow web (Ratzan,2006). While deep web content engines such as Complete Planet and Turbo10can help, can we expect our users to understand how to best use these? Howmany places should our users have to master to find valid and reliableinformation? How many will give up and just Google their queries?Federated searching is promising, as it may offer ‘‘a bridge between thereluctant searcher and the wealth of information in library databases, a bestfit between the ideal and reality’’ (Curtis, 2005, p. 36). Even federated searchengine databases however, do not include websites unless they have beenadded to online catalogs. For users to have the richest possible access toinformation, they need access through online catalogs so that all resources,including websites, can be found.

A study of 555 higher education faculty members in the United Statesand Canada by the Primary Research Group (2009) found that more than53% of faculty members refer to websites in scholarly papers. Researchuniversity faculty members were the most likely among all kinds ofinstitutions to refer to websites with 62% of them so doing. The study alsofound that about ‘‘46 percent of scholars are satisfied with college libraryefforts to preserve and catalog Websites’’ (p. 146).

Websites reviewed by Choice cards, referenced in The Economist, or on the‘‘Links to the World’’ page at Minnesota’s LRL contain information sourcesthat are uploaded as soon as research has been completed. These are oftenauthored by people whose full-time job is to perform research in a specificarea and/or about a specific geographic area. For example, social workersusing ‘‘Links to the World’’ will find many reports authored in 2010 abouthomelessness in Minnesota. For example, a search of Mankato’s online catalogabout homelessness and Minnesota yielded six websites from the WilderFoundation, an organization that conducts research on homelessness inMinnesota. For social workers this is doubly valuable because theFoundation’s work reflects Minnesota’s laws, policies, social work processes,and populations.

III. The Value of Centralized Searching

Cataloging and providing access to Internet resources is not a new conceptand has been a hot topic in library literature for many years, particularly


during the late 1990s and early 2000s. The Journal of Internet Cataloging paida lot of attention to cataloging and access issues related to Internet resources.It documented the history of OCLC’s Cooperative Online Resource Catalog(CORC) initiative which went online in 1999 (Jordan, 2001). CORCevolved into a project to ‘‘encourage and enhance the description of Webresources to better serve library patrons’’ (Hickey, 2001, p. 6). At itsfundamental level, CORC was meant to be a space where catalogers andreference librarians could collaborate and describe web resources in non-MARC metadata and thereby more efficiently catalog web resources whichwere perceived as valuable (Caldwell, Coulombe, Fark, & Jackson, 2001).

By 2002 the CORC initiative had more or less ceased (OCLC, 2002) andcatalogers paid more attention to cataloging electronic journals and books thanto web resources. More recently, a report by Calhoun (2006) predicted the slowdemise of library catalogs and declining importance of cataloging given thegrowth of Internet search engines, particularly Google. Calhoun favored quickinformation-seeking behavior using a Google-like presentation based on key-word results. Mann (2006) refuted that assertion, noting that Google’srelevance ranking cannot serve scholarly research needs. Scholars need anoverview of all relevant sources, not simply the ones that have generated themost traffic and float to the top of a Google page. What Mann alluded to wasthat catalogs contain resources to which a library has access and that have beenassessed, evaluated, and validated by experts such as collection developmentlibrarians with the knowledge to evaluate information.

The scope of library catalogs naturally varies from one institution toanother. Some may question whether websites should be included in a catalog.As Wakimoto (2009) argued ‘‘what distinguishes the catalog from the Web isthe quality of the resources, considered valuable to that library’s users, carefullyselected by subject specialists in the discipline to serve the curricular andresearch needs’’ of library users (p. 412). Since the inception of the weblibrarians have alerted users to valuable resources on the Internet throughnewsletters, pathfinders, and word of mouth. The trend toward using a centralsearchable database such as SerialsSolutions’ Summon or EBSCO’s CompleteDiscovery Solution containing books, articles, and everything else the libraryoffers, means that it makes sense to include web resources as well.

Another reason to put websites in the catalog is that they can help toprovide geographically specific subtopic resources for users. Too oftenstudents select a broad topic, such as homelessness, yet they only need towrite a short paper. Searches could be narrowed by searching for state and/orNGO sites in a local catalog. For example, Mankato’s online catalog yieldedsix reports on homelessness produced by the Wilder Foundation enablingsearchers to find geographically relevant information.


IV. Collection Development Tools for ‘‘Free Puppies’’

Librarians have access to many collection development tools for webresources. Among them are Choice, from the Association of College &Research Libraries (ACRL), and its ‘‘Internet Resources Wiki,’’ and the‘‘Internet Resources’’ column in College & Research Libraries News. ‘‘Referenceand User Services’’ from the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA)website and ipl2’s website are also valuable sources of reviews.

A. ACRL and Choice

Choice is purchased by 3500 libraries according to Ulrichsweb.com and isdescribed in Magazines for Libraries as ‘‘the selection tool of . . . thousands ofacademic libraries’’ (LaGuardia, 2009, p. 154). Fran Graf, managing editor ofChoice, states that the push to review websites came from academic librarianswho needed to keep track of the growing number of resources becomingavailable on the Internet (F. Graf, personal communication, October 23,2010).

A special supplement of Choice was published in 1997 containingwebsites reviews. About this first foray into reviewing websites, Graf wrotein the introduction:

Indeed, there is a wealth of excellent material on the WWW, but sites are appearing andmutating at such a spectacular rate that it is nearly impossible to keep up with them, letalone evaluate their quality. And there is probably no single group more intent onidentifying, assessing, and organizing the best this revolutionary medium has to offerthan librarians. (1997, p. 2)

Graf said there was great response to that first supplement with lots ofinterest and appreciation by users. By 1998, Choice had reviewed 420websites (Graf, 1998; Rockwood, 1998). After the inaugural edition, everyissue of Choice contained web reviews. The web edition evolved so that by2005 it incorporated many ideas provided by users, including an indicatorfor fee-based websites, as well as indicators for previously visited sites (Graf,2005). Now Choice cards come rolling in with a selection of websites in everybatch. ACRL has also made websites available by topics since 1998 in the‘‘Index to Internet Resources’’ in College & Research Libraries News.

B. ipl2 as a Resource

ipl2 which was formed by merger in January 2010 of the Internet PublicLibrary (IPL) and the Librarians’ Internet Index (LII), can be a great way of


finding valuable online resources. It makes available easily digestibleinformation from governmental, mainstream news, and nongovernmentalsources. ipl2 is currently managed by 3 library schools (Drexel, Florida State,and University of Michigan) with 14 other library schools assisting withorganizing and managing the site. The scope of ipl2 is broad serving ‘‘peopleof all ages, nationalities, occupations, and levels of education’’ (The ipl2Consortium, n.d.). Entry is through five different portals: subjects, andmagazines special collections created by ipl2, kids’ stuff, and a teen corner.Libraries can either highlight this website on their home pages or use it as acollection development tool to add resources to their own online catalogs.

V. Minnesota State Resources

Although this section focuses on one state, many others and other statesand government organizations have similar resources. The AmericanLibrary Association’s Government Documents Round Table keeps a wiki-searchable list of state documents, but each state’s resources may varyin usefulness. Nevertheless, state and other government documents createdfor legislators can be valuable sources for users because web-based documentscan narrow unwieldy topics to manageable, narrower, and geographicallyfocused ones. While a number of states are experiencing recession-drivenclosings or scrutiny (Miller, 2010), Minnesota’s LRL is going strong and itswebsite makes a majority of Minnesota electronic state documents readilyavailable.

A. The Minnesota Legislative Reference Library

In the spring of 2003 LRL began a pilot project to make digital copies oflegislatively mandated reports and link them to its online catalog. Manymandated state agency publications and the Legislature’s studies are acquiredelectronically, or if in print, scanned and added or linked to LRL’s catalog.With the demise of the state depository microfiche distribution program, thisproject became even more important. In 2004 the program was expanded to alldigital publications that met the definition of a state document. In addition tolegislative reports, the LRL acquires other state agency publications andarchives copies of those received in electronic format.

Online archiving soon posed several problems for LRL. Adding multiplelinks on the bibliographic records for online documents in several parts, orfor successive issues of a serial, made the catalog records cluttered andconfusing. Frequently there was not a one-to-one relationship between the


paper document and the digital document which could be online in formatsnot amenable to archiving. The static link on the bibliographic record to theLibrary’s archive file meant that the files could not be migrated to anotherserver without breaking over 1000 links in the Library’s catalog. Finally, nopreservation metadata for the electronic files was being recorded.

In 2004 LRL received an LSTA (Library Services and Technology Act)grant to research and develop solutions to these problems. LRL investigatedinstitutional repository software products and document managementsystems used by other states. It soon became obvious that most of thesystems were too large, complicated, and—most importantly—far tooexpensive for LRL. The nature of many software products also conflicted withLRL’s goal of using the catalog to provide access because they created separatecollections with separate catalogs. In the end, LRL concluded that the systembest suited to their needs would be the one they would build themselves.

LRL developed a simple, inexpensive yet robust electronic documentmanagement system. The database did not create a new catalog from scratch,but harnessed LRL’s catalog of MARC 21 bibliographic metadata.Descriptive metadata remains in the catalog record. An Edocs database isused to record preservation and administrative metadata and to create linksbetween separate URLs (as in the case of serial issues), solving the catalogingproblems that the growing archive had presented. The array of topics, thespeed with which documents are uploaded, and the quality of research makethis a valuable site. LRL uploads digital versions of state documents quickly,along with legislative histories, historical data tables, and digitized statelaws. Another valuable Minnesota resource is LRL’s ‘‘Links to the World,’’ acollection of topically arranged websites.

B. Links to the World

LRL’s Links to the World presents sites under broad subjects listing firstMinnesota documents, then federal documents, and after that NGOdocuments. It began around 1993 when Internet information was becomingreadily available and organized on Gopher (Gopher (Protocol), 2011). TheGopher was hierarchical in nature and key-word searching was limited. CarolBlackburn (personal communication, November 19, 2010) at LRL indicatedthat the websites made available on Links to the World were the result of acombination of push–pull influences. It started when it was clear a questionwould be asked repeatedly or something happened that librarians knewwould prompt reference questions at the desk. Initially the URL’s were onRolodex cards at the reference desk at LRL. Over time the entries weretranscribed into a Word file and subsequently into an online version in 1995.


It morphed into a tool that provided legislators with immediate access toinformation directly from their computers. While LRL’s primary audiencewas elected legislators, its resources are openly available on the web. They areparticularly valuable for Minnesota social work students since most of themwill practice in Minnesota. Links to the World is also an excellent place toobtain local vantage points on national or international topics.

Described simply as ‘‘A subject list of Internet resources selected for ourlegislative audience’’ (Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, 2008), itfollows the same format for each topical cascade of websites. As seen inFig. 1, it has 49 broad topics.

As shown in Fig. 2, Links to the World is heavily used. For example,from December 2, 2009 to December 2, 2010 the site was visited 18,181times with the top three individual topics visited being K-12 education with9629 visits, media 7679 times, and 6048 for special interest groups. EachLRL librarian maintains several topical pages and a link checker program isrun once a month. Each librarian fixes the links/references on their pages. Inthe most recent report, a third of the 49 pages had broken links, with anaverage of two to three broken links per page. In terms of content updates onthe topical pages, the librarians add/update pages as they become aware ofnew resources. One or two pages go through a formal content evaluation/update during weekly reference staff meetings. After reviewing all the Linksto the World pages, evaluation of another related Minnesota Webographytakes place. Between the review of these two resources, Blackburn estimatedthat the last total review took about a year and half to complete.

Fig. 1 Topical areas in ‘‘Links to the World.’’

Fig. 2 Links to the World page visits.

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VI. Survey of Social Work ‘‘Free Puppy’’ Collectionsin Minnesota

The authors surveyed social work librarians in Minnesota’s academic librariesabout websites and how they make them available to users. Fifteen collegesand universities with social work programs were identified through theNational Association of Social Workers. If a social work librarian could beidentified, an e-mail questionnaire was sent directly to that person. If not,the head of the library was contacted. They were asked about the following:

1. how they identify web sources;

2. how they promote websites;

3. how websites relate to social work curricula in their opinion;

4. what websites fill a particular need for social work students; and

5. how much time they expend identifying and maintaining websites.

Of the 15 contacted, 5 (33.3%) responded and indicated that Choicecards, ACRL News, and the National Association of Social Worker’s websitewere searched for recommendations. Choice was used by everyone. Onerespondent relied on articles in newspapers such as the New York Times.A group of librarians at one institution responded collectively and listed theFederal Depository Library Program discussion list as a resource. Only onelibrarian responded that LRL was a source. All said that they relied heavilyon faculty suggestions. One respondent commented that the web provides avariety of resources to research the development, implementation, andimplication of issues and policies related to social work practice includinggovernment, media, and foundation websites. Three librarians reportedpromoting the use of websites with LibGuide, three through libraryinstruction, and one with printed pathfinders. No one indicated whichwebsites filled a particular need for social work students.

Because of the low response rate websites of the 15 schools werereviewed. Of the 15, eight used LibGuides and five used LibData. Table 1shows the websites with a numerical indicator of the times that they werefound. These, of course, only represent their presence on these pages and notin their online catalogs.

Most librarians stated they spent a couple of hours per semesteridentifying, promoting, and maintaining websites. It had been anticipatedthat the Links to the World site would be utilized by every social worklibrarian. This was not the case and, as one respondent indicated, its nonusemight simply be due to lack of time. Unlike most of the surveyedinstitutions, Minnesota State University (MSU), Mankato has a graduate

Table 1Websites listed on Social Work library pages

National Association of SocialWorkers 4

Columbia University Social Work Library

Washington University (St. Louis)Websites 4

Disability and Independent LivingMovement Collection

American Public Human ServicesAssociation 3

FedStats

Social Work Access Network 3 Green Book (House Ways and Means)American Public Human Services

Association 3HUD User

Annie E. Casey Foundation 2 International Federation of Social WorkersChildren’s Defense Fund 2 MinCAVACompare Minnesota 2 Minnesota Board of Social WorkFamily Violence Prevention Fund 2 Minnesota Community FoundationInformation for Practice 2 National Public RadioMinnesota Department of Human

Services 2New Social Worker Online

U.S. Department of Health andHuman Services 2

Rural Assistance Center

Urban Institute 2 Pat McClendon’s Clinical Social Work PageBlandin Foundation SAMHSA’s National Clearinghouse for

Alcohol and Drug InformationCenter for Economic and Policy

ResearchSociety for Disabilities Studies

Child Welfare Information Gateway U.S. Department of StateChildinfo (from UNICEF) Wilder Foundation


social work program with strong focus on rural social work. For that reason,the library has sought out geographically relevant resources for students whowill practice in Minnesota. There is regular review of links in LRL with aview to creating records in the library’s catalog. In addition, the ChristianScience Monitor (CSM) and The Economist are reviewed every week forweb-based information sources.

VII. The Cost of Puppy Care and Feeding (Catalogingand Catalog Maintenance)

Adding freely available websites may seem like a great idea in times ofbudgetary difficulties and certainly it can be. However, if Ranganathan’s fifth


law of library science—that the library is a growing organism—is extended,the cost of adding free puppies to a growing catalog means staff time andmoney. The quantification of cataloging time, however, has not been welldocumented in recent years.

Reichmann (1953) noted that libraries had discussed the costs ofcataloging at a ‘‘rate of one article every second year for almost a century’’(p. 290). Some of his data show that the cost of cataloging one resourceranged from 72b to $1.37 between 1885 and 1934 (Table 2). Reichmannalso included a table showing unit output for 1951–1952. Unit output wascalculated as the number of titles processed, divided by the total number ofproduction units, which in turn were counted as one (1) for professional staffand 0.6 for clerical staff. However, no monetary value was provided byReichmann.

Nonetheless, as shown in Table 3, unit cost can be deduced by averagingthe unit output for 1951–1952 (Reichmann, 1953) and comparing that tothe 1952 annual salary of a librarian at a medium-sized academic library, ascalculated by Terrell and Gregory (2003). A recent presentation by Skeen,Grover, and Woolcott (2010) shows that the average cost of unit outputvaries widely between a medium academic and small public library (Table 4).Harris (1989) found that self-reported cataloging costs in 1981 rangedbetween $53.00 and $14.67 (or $129.04 and $35.72 in 2011 values) forlibraries that did not distinguish between monographs and serials. Hisresearch placed the median cataloging cost from 34 libraries at $15.00 (or$36.52 in 2011 USD). Similarly, Leung (1987) found that in 1983 theUniversity of California at Riverside costs for cataloging averaged $14.65 perunit ($32.55 in 2011), ranging from $44.53 ($98.94 in 2011) for originalcataloging down to $8.22–$10.40 ($18.26–$23.11 in 2011) for offline andonline OCLC copy-cataloging respectively.

Table 2Costs of cataloging prior to 1935

Year Cost 2011 value

1885 $1.00 Not available1913 $0.78 $17.441930 $0.726 $9.621934 $1.37 $22.63

2011 value based on CPI Inflation Calculator, United States Bureau of Labor Statistics.


Cataloging cost studies appear more sparsely in the literature after Leungalthough Morris, Hobert, Osmus, and Wool (2000) conducted a cost studywith similar findings. Charbonneau’s (2005) study of production benchmarksdoes not provide any unit costs of cataloging, but it provides examples ofexpected catalog record production that varies from one per hour to six perday to 100 per month. In its report for the Library of Congress R2Consulting (2009) opted not to attempt to create a base cost of catalogingand chose to assume that an original catalog record costs USD $100.00.

In essence the literature simply proves that cataloging is expensive,ranging between $20.00 and $100.00 per resource cataloged, and that it isslow, ranging from 1 to 3 resources per hour, assuming 1950 hours per yearfor 1 FTE (see Tables 3 and 4). The sum findings of the literature as a wholecompare to the cost of cataloging web resources at MSU, Mankato. This is fororiginal and complex copy-cataloging performed by a professional catalogerand for basic copy-cataloging performed by a professional cataloger and forbasic copy-cataloging performed by an experienced paraprofessional.

Table 3Costs of cataloging in 1952

1951–1952Average unitoutput

Average perhour

1952 Annualsalary

1952 Averagedollar per unit

cost

2011 Inflationvalue

639 3 $3,300.00 $5.16 $43.09

Table 42010 Costs of cataloging at Utah State University and North Logan Public Library

Total salary(2010)

Titles added(2010)

Average perhour

Average dollarper unit cost

USU academic $464,240(9.5 FTE)

B20,000 1 $23.21

NLC public $35,000(0.75 FTE)

B4,000 2.5 $8.75


A. Cataloging State Documents: Print and Electronic

Library Services at MSU, Mankato has been a long-time selective federaldepository library and has a tradition of cataloging depository materialseither using copy-cataloging or doing original cataloging. It also has a strongtradition of collecting and cataloging Minnesota state documents. Duringthe days of print and microform, Library Services would derive themicroform MARC 21 records from original print records. As more statedocuments were issued digitally, the number of microforms dwindled untilthey were discontinued in 2004. Thereafter most state documents were madeavailable in digital form by producing agencies or were digitized andarchived by LRL. With the move to electronic formats, review and selectionof state documents became a larger part of the workflow, particularly forlibrarians responsible for social work collection development.

New arrivals were posted in e-mail announcements by LRL. The socialwork collection developer selected web resources from the list and forwardedthe selections to a cataloger for addition to the online catalog. The list wasusually a mixture of Minnesota state documents and other Minnesota-relatedwebsites or reports. However, the creation of MARC 21 records for theelectronic state documents was much different from that of deriving print formicroform records. Many of the resources selected had no print record for useas a derivation base, and thus required full original cataloging. Otherselected resources were in fact component items of continuing resources, suchas reports to the legislature, but the originating sites did not always providetitle-level access. This meant that rather than cataloging a report as a serialonce, catalogers had to search new issues and verify access, or add an issue-specific URL to the cataloged serial MARC 21 record.

Catalogers have to verify URL access for all resources, which is no easyfeat considering that new state administrations or changes in nonprofitleadership often re-create the web presence of the state department or agency,agencies decide on a whim to re-design the website without providingre-directs from changed URL paths. Additionally the Minnesota legislaturein recent years has mandated many mergers and closures and changes inoversight for many state bureaucracies. The cumulative effect is a host ofdescriptive surrogate records in the catalog with links to nowhere.

The maintenance for a collection of online resources is therefore far fromfree. Hours of staff time are required to run URLs through automatedvalidity processes, to investigate the reports, to search for updated URLs, towrite to agencies and wait for replies about updated links when necessary,and then to update the catalog records. Reviewing and resolving a monthlyreport of suspect URLs, can take from 1 to 8 hours. This process is by no


means confined to state documents and applies to other websites, particularlyfor smaller NGOs and municipal or nonprofit websites. LRL’s archivalprocess with their stable URLs has alleviated much of this problem forMinnesota state documents, but not for other web resources.

At Mankato, a graduate assistant with an MLS degree and beginningexperience in cataloging worked for 14 months between January 2007 andMay 2008 to create about 500 catalog records for Minnesota state documents.Some were simple derivations from a print record to an electronic descriptionrecord. Others were true original records and still others entailed complexcopy-cataloging. This involved minimally verifying that the URL matched theresource described in the record, or in the extreme, finding a new URL orcreating a continuing record for a set of serial reports. The graduate assistantworked 56 weeks, generally spending 5–10 hours per week on average at thisspecific cataloging task. This amounted to an average unit output of 9 recordsper week or 1–2 records per hour. At a 2009 professional librarian mid-levelsalary of $52,358 (Hadro, 2009) this equates to an hourly salary of $26.76, andthe unit cost of a cataloged web resource.

B. Cataloging Web Sites from Choice Reviews

In a different snapshot, 86 Choice cards for electronic resources labeled‘‘recommended’’ or better by reviewers were selected from science andtechnology disciplines. They had been culled from batches received between2005 and 2011, with the bulk of them dated 2009–2010. Choice was usedbecause of its prevalent use by social work collection developers. Over thecourse of 5 days in February 2010, an experienced paraprofessional copy-cataloger spent an average of 3 hours per day searching OCLC WorldCat foracceptable copy. The copy-cataloger found 35 (41%) that were acceptable andimmediately exported those MARC 21 records into the catalog. Forty-sevenof the remainder had less-than-acceptable copy and were placed in a local‘‘save’’ file to wait for review and cataloging by a professional. Four were notfound in WorldCat.

MSU, Mankato has defined acceptable copy in the following manner.The website must be cataloged according to current cataloging rules,meaning as set forth in Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd edition, 2002revision with 2005 updates. As shown in Fig. 3, acceptable copy should becataloged as an integrating resource (Record type (Type) a, BibliographicLevel (BLvl) i, and Entry convention (S/L) 2), with the general materialdesignation $h [electronic resource] in field 245. The record must containthe tags 006m and 007c for electronic resource nature and carrierdescriptions respectively to facilitate limiting and facets in the online

Fig. 3 OCLC MARC record acceptable copy example.



catalog, with a Library of Congress Classification number to facilitatecollection analysis, Library of Congress Subject Headings, and a valid URLin field 856. Having found 35 of 86 potential catalog records, the copy-cataloger was able to process 41% of the selected websites. The remainingwebsites were cataloged following OCLC’s interim integrating resourcespractices on book work forms.

C. Cataloging Websites from News Publications

In a similar experiment to estimate time needed to assess and catalogwebsites, the authors reviewed the June 2010 issues of CSM and TheEconomist and identified 100 websites in each publication. Using standardcollection development principles the list was winnowed down to 20 webresources with 10 from each publication.

Table 5Cataloging availability of reviewed Websites

Web site Reviewsource

OCLC recordexists

CurrentAACR2 rules

No. of OCLCholdings

Brookings Institution(www.brookings.edu)

CSM Yes No 24

Cato Institute (www.cato.org) CSM Yes No 22Legal Community Against

Violence (www.lcav.org)CSM Yes No Yes

Tax Policy Center(www.taxpolicycenter.org)

CSM Yes No Yes

Asian Carp Control(www.asiancarp.org)

CSM No N/A No

GLBT Historical Society(www.glbthistory.org)

CSM No N/A No

Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia TaskForce (www.epa.gov/owow_keep/msbasin/)

CSM No N/A No

National Alliance for PublicCharter Schools(www.publiccharters.org)

CSM No N/A No

Pew Research Center’s Internet &American Life Project(pewinternet.org)

CSM No N/A No

University of Notre Dame’sInstitute for Latino Studies(latinostudies.nd.edu)

CSM No N/A No

http://www.brookings.edu

http://www.cato.org

http://www.lcav.org

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org

http://www.asiancarp.org

http://www.glbthistory.org

http://www.epa.gov/owow_keep/msbasin/


http://www.publiccharters.org

Table 5. (Continued )

Web site Reviewsource

OCLC recordexists

CurrentAACR2 rules

No. of OCLCholdings

Harvard University’s Joint Centerfor Housing Studies(www.jchs.harvard.edu)

The Economist Yes Yes 5

National Governors Association(www.nga.org)

The Economist Yes Yes Yes1

Pew Center on the States(www.pewcenteronthestates.org)


Pew Research Center(pewresearch.org)


American Academy of Pediatrics(www.aap.org)

The Economist Yes No 20

National Institutes of Health(www.nih.gov)


Food and AgricultureOrganization (www.fao.org)


Institute for Public PolicyResearch www.ippr.org.uk)


Interagency Council onHomelessness (www.ich.gov)

The Economist Yes No Yes1

National Center on Education andthe Economy (www.ncee.org)

The Economist Yes No Yes

Total 14 4 192Average 70% 29%


As the data in Table 5 show, 70% of these websites had MARC 21descriptions in WorldCat, yet only 29% of those had been catalogedfollowing current rules. While the data in Table 5 are not statisticallysignificant, they do complement results seen from the Choice experiment, andgeneral anecdotal evidence from catalogers—that more than half of thewebsites in WorldCat require more than basic copy-cataloging.

VIII. Discussion and Conclusion

Libraries have benefited over the past four decades from the Library ofCongress’ Cataloging in Publication (CIP) program (Library of Congress,2010). It allows libraries to rely on preliminary cataloging of books. Fornonprint media, such as video and sound recordings, catalogers rely on best

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practices and guidance from Online Audiovisual Catalogers, Inc. (OLAC)(Online Audiovisual Catalogers, 2011) to create MARC 21 records. Web sitecataloging, as we have shown, has been spotty at best. Many libraries havecreated pathfinders or subject web guides, but have chosen not to catalog webresources. As the list of OCLC holdings in Table 5 demonstrated, very fewlibraries choose to catalog websites or even place their OCLC holding symbolon those records.

Just like real puppies bring an ineffable benefit to our human lives, freewebsites can add immeasurable value to users’ research needs. websites canprovide current, authoritative, and in-depth information. Our researchshowed there are hidden costs associated with collection development andcataloging of these websites. Once cataloged, URLs can break or change,additional hidden maintenance costs such as tracking broken links, andbringing catalog records up-to-date. The studies and experiments reportedhere did not attempt to quantify these added maintenance costs. Whethercopy or original cataloging is involved, the average cost is in the range of$26.00–$100.00 per website. A nonquantified hidden cost associated withcataloged websites relates to collection development. If the site changes itscontent, it may need to be rereviewed in its entirety.

While the studies reported in this chapter focused primarily on resourcesfor social work, the findings are extensible beyond social science. Use ofmediated websites such as those in LRL’s Links to the World, can help to easelocal hidden costs.

Calhoun’s prediction about declining use of catalogs and relying onGoogle-like search engines may or may not be in our future. Vaidhyanathan(2010) indicates that there are reasons to worry about Google search results.Information that populates the top of a Google search is not the mostrelevant, but rather the most popular. Yet end users have little understandingfor how certain sites rise to the top. Another reason to worry about the‘‘Googlization of everything’’ becomes evident in the context of informationliteracy. While the web provides a wealth of information, it cannot impartcritical information literacy skills to users if they need to interpret variousviewpoints and identify potential biases. In a recent conference keynoteaddress Vaidhyanathan (2011) challenged librarians to create a framework toenable responsible cultural democracy on the web, similar to the way inwhich we have selectively cataloged web resources and in part throughlibrary/literacy instruction. ipl2 could be a model for this since it assemblesweb resources which have been assessed by professional librarians.

Vaidhyanathan’s challenge led to venues for further research not onlyexploring how librarians should think about the provision of access to theweb information but also in constructing search environments that go


beyond providing access to information that has been vetted only bycommercial publishing establishments. The profession needs to think aboutprovision of access to web resources, how to construct search environmentsthat go beyond giving access to information vetted only by commercialpublishers. As libraries look at their collection development policies,shrinking staff, and reduced materials budgets, they may need to considerinternal paradigm changes, in which web resources are part of the richeruniverse of recorded knowledge, and are not treated as something odd,distasteful, or substandard.

One of the challenges for librarianship is making those paradigm changeshappen. They can start by collection developers submitting websites forcataloging. Since cataloging processes and policies are typically reactive tocollection development policies, the latter need to explicitly include/excludewebsites. Institutional cultures in libraries may also need to change if webresources are included in altered collection development paradigms.

The research in this chapter indicates that few libraries are adding websitesto their catalogs, and the reasons for this need to be teased out and evaluated. Is itthe perceived paucity of reviewing sources? Is it habit to only add print resourcesand dismiss web resources? What do technical services policies, processes, andstaff members do to encourage or discourage the addition of web resources in thecatalog? How about users? Faculty use web resources in their own research(Dewald, 2005; Shpilko, 2011), but do they assign students to find credible andvalid research results on the web? In short the entire institution in whichacademic libraries exist needs shifts in policies and practices.

These questions all beg for further research to be done. While this studyfound that only Choice is used consistently by social work librarians inMinnesota, other means of identifying and evaluating websites need to beexplored. MSU, Mankato has 16 librarians and 14,500 full-time equivalentstudents. It would be helpful if institutions of other sizes and types were toexplore the issues addressed in this chapter. Similarly, comparative data acrossinstitutions of the hidden costs of collection development and cataloging ofweb resources would better enable the field to make hard decisions.

Librarians are faced with two competing pressures. Budgets aredecreasing, which would argue for increased inclusion of ‘‘free’’ resources.Yet they are faced with doing ‘‘more with less,’’ which argues against havingthe time to find, evaluate, and process ‘‘free’’ resources. The inclusion of webresources in online catalogs also means that librarians need to be even morevigilant in their information literacy classes about developing skills forevaluation and validity of web resources. Per the ACRL standards forinformation literacy (2011) the profession must address both ‘‘resourceliteracy’’ (the ability to understand the form, format, location, and methods


for accessing information resources) and ‘‘social-structural literacy’’ (knowl-edge of how information is socially situated and produced includingunderstanding scholarly publishing processes).

Returning to Buytaert’s free-puppy analogy at the beginning of thischapter, the library profession might rewrite the first two sentences to read:

We need to look differently at the free Websites on the Internet once we outgrow ourdisdain for the work of tending these free resources. As professional librarians we havelearned the truth. We know that taking home that puppy (adding that free Web site) isgoing to cost us in the end (but bring value to our users).

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank those who helped us by giving us theirtime, including Francine Graf of Choice, Carol Blackburn and Julie Dingerfrom the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, and the social worklibrarians who informed us about their use of Websites.

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